Title: Clothing Damage
Author: jordannamorgan
Fandom: In/Spectre (Kyokou Suiri)
Characters: Kuro and OCs.
Setting: General
Rating: G.
Length: 946 words.
Summary: Kuro deals with one of the lesser challenges of being an immortal yokai-battler.
Notes: Also written for the prompts of "Secrets and Lies" at genprompt_bingo, and “Immortal” at smallfandomflsh.



For Kuro Sakuragawa, encountering a new cashier at the local furugiya was always rather awkward.

The petite brunette at the register that day was definitely a new face. Bright-eyed and animated, her engaging persona was sure to be a hit with customers… but Kuro was not looking forward to explaining why he was a rather special patron. In the relatively small space of the store, he could already feel her eyes darting back to him often as he moved among the cheapest racks of secondhand clothing, quickly throwing items into a shopping cart.

Said cart was heaped almost to overflowing by the time he wheeled it to the counter, where she watched his approach with wide eyes.

“Uh… good afternoon, sir! Did you find everything you were looking for today?”

“I did, thank you,” Kuro replied with perfunctory politeness, beginning to pile his intended purchases on the counter.

One after another, old T-shirts passed through the girl’s hands to be rung up. Some were unadorned, but many were graphic tees. The screen-printed images were a colorful cavalcade of often none-too-current pop culture: whimsical cartoon animals, souvenir artwork of foreign destinations, logos of rock bands Kuro had never listened to. Thirty or so of these wildly assorted oddities were followed by almost as many gently-used pairs of jeans and slacks.

“Wow… I guess you found a lot!” the girl chuckled awkwardly, giving off every sign of someone who was intensely curious but too polite to ask what in the world he needed so much random out-of-date clothing for.

Of course, Kuro was not inclined to explain to her that fighting with yokai was rather hard on his clothes.

It was a dilemma he’d quickly discovered after becoming the protector of Kotoko Iwanaga, beloved “Goddess of Wisdom” to all beings supernatural and inhuman. His combination of immortality and precognition made him uniquely suited for any dirty work she needed done, with no pain or permanent injury to himself. Yet it turned out that even in his case, there was a price for being regularly impaled or torn limb from limb by monsters—because no clothing had yet been invented that shared his regenerative powers.

Not that he had to worry about bloodstains. Even his blood was absorbed back into his body when he healed, and the few monsters he actually had to destroy tended to be creatures of supernatural energy that didn’t physically bleed either. Still, the rips and holes so often left behind in his clothes would make them quite unpresentable, if not altogether unwearable.

The practical solution he settled on was to build up as inexpensive and disposable a wardrobe as possible—which is what led him to become a favorite customer at the furugiya. What he saved in buying cheaply secondhand, he more than made up for in the quantity of his purchases.

Fortunately, Kuro was blessed with an appearance that wore such casual looks well. What might have seemed slovenly on someone else came across as fashionably vintage or grunge on his slim dark figure. Better still, he had a total indifference to style; if his clothing was comfortable and didn’t attract any weird looks on the street, it was all good with him. That was why he could be so cavalier about tossing such eclectic items into his cart. Since he prioritized his budget over fashion, buying in bulk at the lowest possible price, he usually paid more attention to the price tags of shirts than the actual designs on them. After all, the odds were good that most of what he bought would be trashed in some supernatural battle before the year was out anyway.

Exactly none of which he would ever dream of telling the cashier.

To be fair, he had developed a cover story for his frequent large purchases of cheap clothes. It had spread as common knowledge among the rest of the staff by now. However, with the shiny-eyed way the new girl was starting to look at him, he had an uneasy feeling it wouldn’t be the wisest excuse to use with her.

…But then the shop’s elderly owner Mrs. Ihara stepped through the curtain behind the counter—and spoiled everything regardless by letting out the lie herself.

“Oh, good afternoon, Mr. Sakuragawa! I see you’ve met Hiyoko, our new cashier!” She turned a beaming smile upon her employee. “Mr. Sakuragawa is one of our best customers—and such a fine gentleman! He comes in here all the time to buy clothes to donate to a local charity!”

Hiyoko’s starry gaze swung back to Kuro, and on her face he could practically read the equation being calculated in her mind.

Dark and mysterious looks, plus a generous nature, plus being well off enough to perform regular acts of charity?—That equals complete and total boyfriend material.

“Uh… nice to see you, Mrs. Ihara, but I have to hurry and meet my girlfriend for lunch!” Kuro blurted out, hastily fumbling money onto the counter.

As he reloaded his cart with the purchases the old woman had taken it upon herself to bag, it wasn’t lost upon him that Hiyoko stood looking as deflated as a popped balloon. Even so, he resolved in that moment to never let Iwanaga go shopping with him there… because if she did, there was absolutely no doubt she would cast one glance upon that girl and promptly forbid him to ever enter the place again. If he could help it, he wasn’t about to lose his cheapest clothing supplier over a cashier’s romantic imagination.

Bargain hunting is getting to be even harder than yokai hunting, he reflected wearily as he rushed out the door.

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2023 Jordanna Morgan